Profile:

Rebecca Chopp looks to the
future as interim provost

Three months ago, Rebecca Chopp took over the role of interim provost
with the future on her mind. Twelve years ago, Emory's potential lured her
from the University of Chicago, and today she still sees tremendous opportunity.

In fact, she views this as a particulary crucial time, a crossroads of
sorts. With ongoing projects that seek to define both the campus' physical
appearance and its attitude toward its central mission, Emory has a chance
to decide what kind of institution it wants to be in the 21st century, and
Chopp couldn't imagine a better time to be involved.

"I've seen Emory grow and develop since I've been here, and now
it is ready to go to a new stage, as a kind of new university," she
said. "The world is changing, and we are more and more participating
in that change."

Chopp took over as provost June 1 when Billy Frye began his tenure as
chancellor. As the former associate dean for faculty and academic affairs
at the Candler School, Chopp brought to the job an intimate knowledge of
Emory and an enthusiasm for addressing the questions the University is asking
about itself. Some of the answers will be provided by initiatives like the
campus master planning process and the commission on teaching, which Chopp
chaired.

The latter has just issued its report, to be published in next week's
Emory Report. Some 60 pages, the commission's findings are intended to jump-start
a Universitywide discussion on exactly what teaching is and how it might
be improved. Chopp said everyone on campus-faculty, students, staff and
administrators-is involved in the learning process and thus has a stake
in what may result from this effort.

Indeed, a central theme of the report is how the concept of teaching
is changing in today's world. No longer is learning confined to the lecture
hall, Chopp said, but instead it happens all over campus, in professors'
offices, in the grass of the Quad on a sunny day, in the Carlos Museum coffee
shop over a cappucino.

"I don't think that's a brand new idea," Chopp said, "but
I think it's significant in our agenda. Subject matters have changed; the
way we teach them has changed. [Teaching]'s present in almost everything
we do. That is a wonderful vision-that teaching is really part of who we
are and not simply what we produce in the classroom."

Vital to encouraging this more holistic approach to learning is the presence
of an "intellectual community" at Emory, and fostering this enivronment
will be one of the goals of Chopp's term as provost. "A university,
like every other entity, should have its own personality, and I think Emory
is developing a personality and a culture of intellectual community,"
she said.

Chopp's idea of this culture would benefit not only students but faculty
as well. In fact, a pilot program taking place this year will help introduce
new faculty to the Emory community. Chopp said the provost's office will
conduct a yearlong development program to provide new professors with information,
offer a peer mentoring program and familiarize them with campus resources.

Chopp cites the removal of barriers as one of the conditions for fostering
an intellectual community. "You have to have the physical spaces, which
is why the campus master plan is so important. It is quite literally symbolic
of the reshaping of Emory. It provides us with the opportunity to envision
and to build bridges between the various parts of the University.

"The future of Emory is dependent upon our ability to be flexible
in terms of how we move around the world of knowledge, and I consider it
a privilege that we get to be here at this time, to be the ones to say,
'Here's how the physical space will accommodate our future.'"

At some point in that future, Chopp will return to teaching. Though she
still works with a handful of doctoral students, her duties as provost don't
leave her enough time for the classroom. As chair of the teaching commission,
she learned that Emory faculty feel passionately about both teaching and
research, and she is no different-Chopp is a well-known scholar in feminist
theology and political movements in Christianity.

But for now she is concentrating on academic matters across the University.
Though the search process has not yet begun for naming a permanent provost,
Chopp said she will consider putting her name in the running. No doubt she
would like to continue the work that will have only just begun in her "interim"
year.

"[Another] thing that has to happen is this faculty has to want
an intellectual community," Chopp said. "You can't simply rearrange
space, or you can't simply announce that a culture is what you want. People
have to want and strive for it, and do it on their own. Again, we are very
much at the next stage in our growth as an institution."